Those guys are awesome. Anyone know what size boards and rigs they would be using there?

most use a 100freestyle and 4.7... everyday

Give me 6 months there and I could probably pull off a carve gybe!


Maybe!

its just ending now cause all our staff are coming across to vassiliki, so basically our summer, id say the off season also has more wind than WA in summer.. its pretty choppy so youll learn your gybe and then youll be able to do one anywhere anyime

My knees were hurting just watching that.

Oh to be 20 odd years younger and tallented.

Great vid

Just like any day on the Australind Estuary, only difference is we don't have quite such tall palm trees though

yea a bug went around this season, they found the cure, take one teaspoon of concrete and harden the F*&K up!! but probs wont be around next season!!

Get some of that action onto OZ tv, summer bay or whatever it's called and then the kids will want in!

That's the reason the surfing scene is so big, it's on all the ads & soaps, expose the kids to it, they don't even know it exists.
People just think Wallies when you mention windsurfing, tried it or saw it 20 years ago and it was toooo hard.

Turn that clip into a Coke ad at the start of summer and you would see some instant interest.

Even the danglers would have to admit thats good.

It's windy year-round.

well... kind of. Winter in Dahab (Oct-March) in more like 50-60% chance of wind, whereas it's over 80% the rest of the year and July-Sept can be close to 100%. Plus the days are short, and it's not as hot (this might be a plus!) So there's better places to be in the new year - like Margarita!

Paul Kelf said...

Get some of that action onto OZ tv, summer bay or whatever it's called and then the kids will want in!

That's the reason the surfing scene is so big, it's on all the ads & soaps, expose the kids to it, they don't even know it exists.
People just think Wallies when you mention windsurfing, tried it or saw it 20 years ago and it was toooo hard.

Turn that clip into a Coke ad at the start of summer and you would see some instant interest.

Even the danglers would have to admit thats good.

Is it really that simple? Sure getting exposure can help, but not if the exposure shows the sport to be something Joe and Joanna Average cannot do.

They used to have flat-water windsurfing on soaps, even at "Summer Bay"; I used to sail where it was shot. They had flat-water windsurfing on ads. They had flat-water windsurfing on Miami Vice. The emphasis was on getting out and having fun, not being extreme because extreme sports are just not popular - that's a fact of life.

And the sport was huge; 25 shops in NSW, 25,000 boards sold each year, huge pro scene with cars for winners in Oz, 250,000 spectators for the Dutch World Cup round. Lots of people obviously didn't think it was too hard, because they did it in huge numbers.

And then the emphasis shifted to more extreme stuff and the sport died because people looked at it and said "too hard" and had to wait for wind. The people who were turned off by uphauling on an old Wally are hardly going to be willing and able to get into a sport that seems to be all about extreme freestyle. Will people really say to themselves "I found it too hard to sail on flat water in 6 knots, but hell yeah I can get out and throw a double goiter in chop and 25 knots"????

Surfing doesn't normally put too much stuff about Teapahuo and tow-in, it still emphasises getting out there every day in normal conditions - stuff that teh average person can relate to. I'm a complete kook on a surfboard, but I can look at the pros doing bottom turns and relate to them.

Windsurfing promotes only the extreme end which just isn't available very often in most places - and what extreme sport is really popular anyway? I can't even work out what the top freestyle sailors are doing, all I can see is that it's hard or impossible to do that stuff if you live in Sydney and have the time restrictions of a normal life.

Those guys are amazing, but if a more extreme image was going to help windsurfing, the sport would have been small in the early '80s when it was all about flat-water fun, and it would have boomed in the '90s when its image was all about loops and high speed slalom sailing. Instead it grew in the '80s and crashed in the '90s.

Yeah, you are right Paul and Hoops. Does the sight of Tiger Woods put people off golf or Roger Federer off tennis? - not a bit. The airing of extraordinary expertise can only earn the sport respect. It might help identify the sport with kids again. In the poley/kitey wars the perjoritive most often thrown at windsurfing is that it is associated with geriatrics.

How about motorsport.. Motorcross for example.. How much air time does amateur motorcross get as opposed to pro level FMX for example? or go-karting/formula ford as opposed to the V8 supercars? The top end, contemporary stuff is what gets the punters interested..

I have seen Chris249's perspective repeated quite frequently on this forum (every post he makes it seems!), and while I agree that Wallys and one designs have, and had their place, and he's obviously very passionate about them, bringing up the historical boom in the 80s on this forum doesn't help the sport today.

As far as I can tell the "Back in my day sonny.." line only serves to turn off the younger generations. What will help is figuring out what will catch the eye of the future market, and running with it.

Kiting has us beat there - lots of bling, colour, and attitude. It's easy to learn, easy to transport and store, and you can rapidly see that the step from doing the beginner cruising stuff to the extreme dingle-dangle spinny stuff is as simple as not paying attention for 0.5 seconds. None of that stuff applies to wally or OD gear. It's heavy, bulky, and lets face it, today's old people used to do it.

The newer stuff has more bling factor, and we seem to be getting a bit more colour back too, but it is still bulky (compared to kiting), and requires more effort to get good(again - compared to kiting).

The plastic sit-on-top kayak market has taken over much of the 'Chris249 niche' where windsurfing was 'back in the day'.. they're bright colours, accessible, not overly energetic, can be used in stuff all wind, and the price is right for the market. And like the windsurfing equipment of old, there are plenty of them sitting in peoples sheds because the fad has passed. Not many of them have gone out and bought a whitewater kayak, or sea kayak as a result of the sit-on-top, but I bet that some of them were inspired to buy the sit-on-top by seeing one of those other more specialised genres of the sport.

I say don't blame the specialised genres - these things seem to have a natural lifespan... like flared jeans, and corduroy, and kiting.

Sure, flares and corduroy still work well as pants.. they're just not where it's at any more.

we have to be careful where this part of the sport goes! Have a look at the attached vid, Id hate to see the same thing happen too windsurfing

I have been watching guys on the river this season & some only started sailing this season, yet they are already doing freestyle tricks (pity they don't look before hand).
The young kids pick this stuff up really quick because they are dead keen.
Young kids only want to do extreme stuff these days and this is one way to attract them to the sport, once they're in they will try other stuff like wave & speed.
Everyone sees kites because they are highly visible, either in close to shore, in the air or in the news.
Freestyle can be done in close to shore & people can actually see it.
No-one sees slalom racing because it's too far off-shore for spectators and doesn't look exciting anyway (to the general public)

Are there any teachers out there that could get a DVD shown at their school for sport or PE, I'll bet the kids would be excited.

This is a chance to grow the sport in Oz, maybe the Clubs, Associations, Importers & Shops should try a different approach.
I believe sponsored sailors should be visiting the beaches and giving demos when not on tour & competing.
We have the F2 Team in Perth most of summer & get to see them training and sailing with the rest of us and it's great to watch.
I believe this alone has resulted in an increase in freestyle in Perth.

Expose the kids to it and they will be busting to try it.

This forum has gone to schit. On this thread we've got people saying we shouldnt be encouraging the more performance aspects of windsurfing because it's too extreme for the general public and most people would find it too hard. Another thread has people pannicking because they have kitesurfers on a few postcards. Now some anonimous tool has started up some crap about boards designed for gays.
If there are image problems in windsurfing then theres your answers.